Almost as important, and exceedingly disturbing, is that this connection (between handling corpses and starting infections during surgery) was only made in 1847.

An arms race between the police and who else? Crimes in the US are not committed with the "latest and greatest assault rifles". They're committed with handguns (mostly crappy old Saturday night specials). The last arms race between US police and citizens was in the 1920's, when assault rifles were banned (as they still are).

"Ex-military" doesn't mean "unhinged violent psychopath". If an overwhelming show of force isn't necessary, like when you're serving a warrant for a nonviolent crime, kicking in doors and invading homes is more likely to cause a bad outcome than just knocking on the door. If the person who's home you're invading has been trained to deal with a similar situation and invading their home isn't necessary, you shouldn't go in with SWAT unless you really want a bad outcome.

This is an excellent point. The only functional difference between a poorly defended unpopular position and a troll is the intent of the poster, which is often impossible to determine from the post alone (Poe's law and all).

The broken window fallacy describes spurring economic activity with destruction. While that is what Zorg is describing, it actually works as a means to maintain "life" with busywork jobs. It may not create any economic value overall, but it certainly allows people to thrive.

A better way to describe destruction encouraging life is through competition of resources and culling the established players every now and then. If a particular species (or whatever) is allowed to establish dominance over a resource to the exclusion of others, diversity in that arena diminishes (though diversity in other arenas may increase). Destruction changes things and allows resources to be exploited in new ways. In this way, Cornelius is also stifling life by protecting the status quo and trying to preserve the current order.

We don't need leaders. We need representatives.

"Leaders", who treat the country and its citizens as their plaything, are what got us into this mess.

Well, you'd ramp up the number of representatives, too. (Both to dilute the extremely stupid, corrupt, overbearing and to make bribery more difficult.) If we scaled up Congress to the same levels of representation (congresspeople per citizen) we had when the country was founded, we'd have over 10,000 congressmen today. At 25k unique congresspeople per decade, you'd run out of seats on your board pretty quickly.

Even sticking with the current number of representatives, the complete turnover every four years (staggered, but on average) would overwhelm available board positions pretty quickly.

Yes. And if you read through what I actually wrote, and left the poor strawmen alone, you'd see that that's all I ever claimed.

Simply:
I don't like the involvement of politics in science.
The book is politics and psuedoscience.
Dobbs' review is science.
The letter is politics.
I'm irritated that the scientists involved in the letter feel so compelled to participate in the pollution of their field with politics.

Ignoring crackpots or debunking their "theories" with well-reasoned arguments (like Dobbs did) is good, but railing against crackpots with nothing but self-righteous petitions is not good (and has nothing to do with science). Dobbs' review stands on its own. The letter adds nothing to the reason of his arguments.

I think that's the issue. I don't neatly fit into some simplistic dichotomy (liberal-conservative or whatever...), so trying to decipher what I'm I'm saying using that key must be baffling. You seem to imagine that because I don't agree with the letter, that I also disagree with Dobbs and agree with Wade. I'm not made of card: the worldview of real people can be more nuanced than that.

I can accept that compromise! So it's decided.

That alone is an amazing idea. If the display of a useful side/rear view display is tied to the appropriate turn signal, we might actually see people using their signals again!

Nuts to that stuff. Make it twice as thick and double or triple the battery size.

I totally agree... in fact I said just that. How do we get from here to there? That's the hard part.

(I'm genuinely asking, by the way. It would be nice to start a discussion on how to solve this problems.)

It is wrong, but women may not be punished for not being aggressive so much as men are being rewarded for it. That sounds like a distinction without a difference, but the default state is not get promotions and (especially) raises unless pushed for. Non-aggressive men may also get fewer raises and promotions.

It's a difficult situation to fix, too, because any correction would require companies giving regular raises based entirely on merit. That's how it should be, but companies are loath to give anything to employees that isn't pressured out of them, which is where the reward for aggression comes in. I wonder if the pay is more equal in government, where it's determined more by time of employment.

The aggressiveness certainly pays off, which is not the sign of an ideal system. I've never received a (non cost of living, non changing jobs) raise without asking for it, even though I always get them when I ask. My wife hadn't received any either, until I convinced her to push for one, which she immediately got.

If not being a serious scientist means I spend my days doing actual science instead of becoming embroiled in politics, then I'll wear that distinction with honor.

What if that's not a choice, either?

With SuperWiFi 4.0 "IoT edition" (TM), all of your appliances create a mesh network and find a path to the internet !!!

or

"I'm sorry sir, your water heater won't operate until it's able to register with the activation server. Please remove the foil from its antenna."

Do these scenarios really seem too far fetched or unlikely?